One of the longest-standing Conservative Party figures has made a passionate case for rejecting rent controls.

David Gauke – an MP for Hertfordshire until 2019, a former Work and Pensions Secretary and recently an adviser on prisons to the Starmer Labour government – makes the car on an article for the Conservative Home website.

He says, bluntly: “Landlords should be allowed to rent out their properties at the market price” and he believes that humiliated Labour housing minister Runashara Ali was behaving logically as a landlord but hypocritically as a member of the current government.

Gauke says as rents have risen while living standards have fallen it is perhaps inevitable that some would call for rent controls.

He admits that private renters spend a greater share of their income on housing than homeowners with mortgages – 39% on average, against 20%.

This has fuelled resentment, Gauke believes, which some on the Labour left – as well as Jeremy Corbyn and the Green Party – will exploit in the push for rent controls.

“Labour – under pressure in inner city seats – may well struggle to resist demands for a more interventionist approach.  In particular, the debate is likely to move quickly to the issue of rent controls” says the Tory.

But he mocks rent controls as “the mullet hairstyle of policies – it is both very bad and back in fashion” and says any effort to implement these measures will end up with one of two consequences.

“Landlords decide either to sell their properties or cease to invest in their upkeep. This means that those seeking tenancies lose out and, in the longer run, the quality of rental properties declines.”

As party conference season approaches and activists return from their holidays, rent controls may become a hot issue again.

You can read Gauke’s piece in full here:  https://conservativehome.com/2025/08/11/david-gauke-rent-control-is-the-mullet-hairstyle-of-policies-it-is-both-very-bad-and-back-in-fashion/